


I've Never So Adored You

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fortune Telling, Prouvaire-centric, Psychic Abilities, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6945658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If ever he thought that showing his poems to Enjolras would save him, he would. But the future can’t be washed away as easily as graphite and ink.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>(Or, Prophet Poet Prouvaire.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Never So Adored You

**Author's Note:**

> ambiguous setting, ambiguous conflict, ambiguous ending. forgive me.

“We’re going to change the world,” Enjolras says one day. He has his head tipped back and a smile on his face; there’s sunlight in his hair and a cigarette between his fingers. Someone has set a flower behind his ear.

“I know,” Prouvaire says. Enjolras opens his eyes and turns his smile over to the poet.

The air smells like rain and the ground is soft. The _Amis_ sit together in the sunshine outside the Musain, with all of the spindly black iron tables pulled together to make room for all of their elbows and notebooks and the mismatched Musain coffee cups. A few scraggly herbs sit in a brown jar at the center. Prouvaire’s shoes are muddy.

“Ça ira, ça ira,” Enjolras sings to himself. Feuilly smiles down at his hands. It’s the only cause that any _Ami_ will claim as truly hopeless: getting Enjolras to stick to English. He’s devastating like this, with his blue eyes and his black sweater and the white cigarette that he puts to his mouth. Bahorel likes to call him a French cliché. Joly likes to drop his black beret on that golden hair when Enjolras isn’t paying attention.

Grantaire starts humming along. His ankles are pressed up against Prouvaire’s and his hands keep wandering to steal scraps of paper. “My coffee’s gone cold,” Bossuet says sadly.

Prouvaire starts writing a poem. It is an odd thing, and familiar. Something golden tugs on his thoughts until he can rally his fingers into clutching the pen and putting it to paper. The words do not pass through his mind before he writes them.

_when my poems do not come-_  
_when they are stagnant,_  
_like low flames that smolder in my throat,_  
_or a reserve of swirling ink still waiting in my fingertips-_  
_i know that the words are building to a fevered scream_  
_that will soon come pouring out of my shocked mouth._

Prouvaire stares at the untidy words and feels a sting of fear, low in his stomach. He wishes he could cross them out, and the future, too. Something is coming. Something that does not bode well for either revolutionaries or their poets.

Poems are never just poems. Prouvaire stows his pen in his bag and gives the rest of his paper to Grantaire. Across the table, Enjolras keeps singing “Ça ira.”

*

They’re strangers here, in this white city full of cherry blossoms. Enjolras emerges as their leader because he’s lived in France most recently, and has the hardest time shaking its influence from his shoulders.

They’re all kids of important men and women; they’re all French; they’ve all been relocated to this odd, composed city. Together they are nine, and Enjolras leads them like he was born for it. He calls them his Amis, and he loves them. Everyone listens because he reminds them of a heritage that has been slipping too easily through their fingers, even Prouvaire, who listens because he misses his home like a visceral ache.

The _Amis_ aren’t the only ones who Enjolras captures. People listen wherever he goes. He’s a force of nature, he’s a deity, he’s an inspiration so bright and glowing that Prouvaire has never been able to capture him on paper. 

People listen to Enjolras, and they love him. At his side, Prouvaire tries to stay quiet.

No one wants to hear prophesies told by a black kid from the banlieues of Paris.

*

“I like the color of your sweater,” Enjolras says.

They’re walking down the sidewalk together, just the two of them, and Enjolras is smoking like he always does. It’s his most obvious vice.

“Thanks,” Prouvaire says.

The cherry petals are being swept off the trees by an insistent wind, the same one that blows away the smoke from Enjolras’s mouth. Some of the pink petals get caught in his blond hair. He doesn’t notice.

“We need to talk about the protest,” Enjolras says. Insurrections sounds so gentle on his tongue; he could be talking about the weather. He could be breathing out gunpowder and Prouvaire would still find it beautiful. “Do you think everyone will be there tonight?”

“I don’t think anyone said they wouldn’t be,” Prouvaire says. “I know Grantaire took the notes for the last meeting, maybe he made a note of it.”

Both of Enjolras’s eyebrows go up. “If Grantaire took notes I imagine they’re mostly sketches,” he says wryly.

“Maybe he sketched the faces of everyone who can’t come.”

Enjolras’s laugh emerges as a plume of smoke. “Maybe,” he allows. His voice is fond. “I know Bahorel has invited some of the boys from his hall to join us. As far as protesting goes, I imagine having more people is best.”

“Are you afraid?”

Enjolras looks up thoughtfully as he considers the question. He has more petals on the lapels of his black jacket now. “Je pense que non,” he says finally. Prouvaire doesn’t draw attention to his lapse into French. “There’s no real reason for something like this to get violent, unless the policemen are particularly unruly.”

“That isn’t impossible.”

“I know.” Enjolras takes another drag on his cigarette and slings an arm over Prouvaire’s shoulder. “But I have faith.”

Prouvaire reaches up to knock the flower petals out of his hair.

*

Prouvaire has poems around him everywhere, to the extent that his friends pretend to not recognize him if he appears without words scribbled on his wrists or a journal in his hands. He always has to empty different snippets from the notes of his phone and keep any scrap paper that could be idly written on. Leaving prophesies behind, he has decided, could be disastrous.

*

He experiments often. There are histories and mythologies about this, he isn’t flying completely blind, but there’s no need to be archaic. He thinks about Delphi and trances. He gets high in his apartment for the first time on a day when rain is tapping against his window and the flowers over the sink are beginning to turn brown at the tips of their petals.

It feels like he has bees in his head, telling him secrets. He feels comfortable and warm. When he comes down, he finds that he’s written three pages of exhaustive detail about a day in Feuilly’s life, down to the timestamps on text messages and the takeout chosen for dinner.

It turns out to be the next day. Feuilly’s plans play out exactly as Prouvaire had predicted them. Which is cool as fuck, admittedly, but not really what Prouvaire was going for. He gets rid of the rest of the drugs.

*

The group decides to go out a few nights later, even Enjolras, who has reached a breaking point in his most recent essay and decides that spending another minute in front of his computer could be hazardous to his health. It’s still far too cold at night. Prouvaire takes a scarf he stole from Feuilly and some gloves that Bossuet forgot in his room.

They meet in a cluster on the street. Prouvaire wishes in that moment that he were an artist instead of a writer, so that he could capture the imposing sight of Enjolras, carelessly dressed in a long red coat, flanked by all of his friends.

They go somewhere they can get alcohol and hear decent music. Courfeyrac brings pretty blond girl that he dances with for most of the night. She has dark brown eyes and a smile that never falls, and Pontmercy spends most of the night watching her.

Bahorel and Feuilly are sitting at the bar. Their shoulders are close, but not toughing. The music is good. Prouvaire lets Courfeyrac and his girl drag him into dance, and he doesn’t leave them until his chest is sore with laughter.

He goes to sit at an empty table. His head feels full and bright, but beneath the blur of alcohol is a familiar strain.

 _Grantaire,_ Prouvaire thinks. His reaches for his phone. He loves writing about Grantaire. He loves revealing verses and rhymes for Grantaire. But the words have been so strange, lately. Prose poems instead of sonnets and couplets. He tunes out the music and the singing as he starts to tap on his phone’s tiny keyboard.

_he wears satisfaction like paint, messy and dripping and full of the same colors used for sunsets and for robbing graves. there is bitterness is the negative space of his darkened hands, always reaching for the sunlight, always curling jealous fists around gold and silver. and he would sing his wretched praises if the violin strings of his throat had not been overplayed, and he would pray on his knees if they had not been cut out from under him. belief is the ache of his spine which keeps him upright. weariness is the thread which keeps him silent._

_(in the afternoon he died._  
_at the end. satisfied.)_

Prouvaire looks at the poem for a long time. He looks around for Grantaire, who is smiling and teasing Enjolras with a brilliant smile on his face. His hands are moving restlessly; his hair curls around his ears. He’s so wonderfully alive and for a moment it takes Prouvaire’s breath away.

He saves the poem in his notes and resolves to not think about it again.

*

They protest. The air is thick with cherry blossom petals. They march with each other, and with their supporters and friends, and with sympathizers who join them along the way.

Enjolras is happy and exuberant. His hair is crowned with flower petals and his eyes are bright and he sings and shouts and leads the crowd of people down the street.

It is a modest protest, but it is not small enough to ignore. Prouvaire is proud. He has angry poems that are not his own scrawled up his wrists, and he wrote poems for bravery on every single one of his friends’ wrists before they began. He can see his own slanted black handwriting now, on Enjolras’s dark skin, when he pounds his fist into the sky.

Several policemen watch them. Some of them do not take their eyes off of Enjolras. Enjolras stares back and keeps singing as he marches.

One of the policemen has the audacity to trip Grantaire as he goes by. The dark-haired boy stumbles before he catches his balance and turns around, snarling.

“Oh, merde.” Enjolras grabs Grantaire by the collar and pulls him back. “Comporte-toi!”

“I’ll behave myself when they do,” Grantaire snaps, but he doesn’t fight against Enjolras’s grip. They keep going.

Prouvaire sings, when he finds his voice. He sings along with Enjolras, and Grantaire joins them, and Combeferre does too. Before long the tune spreads through the crowd of marchers like a pool of water. Everyone catches the droplets of song in their hands and then begins to sing along, until the words are pouring from every mouth. Prouvaire is proud. He holds Grantaire’s hand and Bahorel’s. He isn’t afraid of the future.

The policeman who tripped Grantaire follows them down the length of the street. He listens to their songs and speeches. He does not leave until Enjolras’s crowd has dispersed.

*

The _Amis_ celebrate in the Musain, because the owner likes Enjolras and the bartender can speak French, and the back room has become their domain over the long nights spent in the city. They do little more than laugh and drink and talk about the march in happy tones. Enjolras is sorting through names and numbers given to him by people who wish to join his crusade; at his side, Courfeyrac is folding extra flyers into paper cranes and boxes and flowers.

Prouvaire steals a flyer from him and a pencil from Grantaire. He sits with the back to the room and he writes. His glass of wine is finished by the end of it, though he doesn’t remember ever pausing to take a sip.

_we should catch snowflakes on our tongues to make up for everything our hands have not done today, but it is too warm. we sink our teeth into the dirt instead._

Enjolras looks up when Prouvaire slides into the seat next to him and gives him a smile.

“There’s something we missed,” Prouvaire says quietly in Enjolras’s ear. “Something didn’t happen that was supposed to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Prouvaire’s teeth feel bitter. If ever he thought that showing his poems to Enjolras would save him, he would. But the future can’t be washed away as easily as graphite and ink. He’s so drunk. “But there are going to be consequences.”

“I’ll check back in with everyone before I go to bed,” Enjolras says soothingly. He has a concerned line between his golden eyebrows, but his touch is soft and reassuring on Prouvaire’s shoulder. He is too kind for fate. “I don’t expect anything negative to have come from today, though– we really accomplished something.”

“Did we really?”

Enjolras’s shoulders tense. He turns to face Grantaire and says, “Of course we did.” He keeps his eyes wide and unassuming, but Prouvaire can see that he’s stirring for a fight.

Grantaire wants to give it to him. “I’m glad you think so,” he says grandly. “In my opinion, the only good thing about today was the sight of the flower petals of your hair. Everything else was a colossal waste of time.”

“Comment peux-tu dire ça?” Enjolras demands, and then he swears and throws his papers down. “How can you say that?”

“Easily!” Grantaire cries. “I saw no laws changed, I saw no criminals charged, and I found no money in my pockets.” He pauses to take a delicate sip of wine. “In my books, a protest with such an outcome must have been a failure.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “If we have changed the mind of a single man today I will count it a success.”

“Yes, but you have the advantage of existing solely off of smoke and sunlight,” Grantaire tells him seriously. “Those of us with more mundane needs have to make money for our food and wine.”

“You must see the value in things other than food and wine.”

“Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus,” Grantaire says. He toasts Prouvaire elaborately and then almost spills his wine when Enjolras grips his wrist.

“Will you stop?” Enjolras asks him quietly.

Grantaire grins, up close and pleased in Enjolras’s face. “Anything for you,” he replies, and the words are far too soft for the space between them. They leave the air tender and warm. Enjolras’s expression changes.

In the morning, Prouvaire finds another poem about Grantaire in the notes on his phone.

_i am unstable around you, and spilling emotions like so much paint and charcoal. where you keep your fingers precise and pristine i plunge mine into the dirt to keep from reaching for your wrist, arm, shoulder. i try to hold this feeling inside and let it stain my own skin instead of bleeding out onto yours. i should not blur the lines of your figure with the wretched, undone trembling of my filthy, nervous hands._

*

He starts pinning up poems. His friends are always surprised at how bare his walls are, but they’ve never seen him like this, with sheaves of paper and spread all over the floor and taped up where he can see them. He even uses red string, on occasion.

He has a world map and a few art prints on the wall in his bedroom; he has a poetry award certificate in a frame above his desk. But the largest wall in the living room is left completely blank.

In the past he’s constructed entire poems (entire futures) by doing exactly this– putting up all of his fragments and finding the places where the words fit into one another. He ruined the walls of his old apartment with pushpins.

He pins up tarot cards, too. He has only one deck, though whenever he’s in the right kind of bookstore or shop he’ll peruse the collections and wait for sparks beneath his fingertips. They’ve never told him anything; even when he shuffles them and lays them out in the correct patterns (he’s bought more than one book on the subject) they don’t seem to make sense.

But he keeps them, because they’re comforting, and several of them remind him of his friends. He doesn’t know why. The Six of Swords is Grantaire. But he doesn’t know why. It’s a terribly melancholy card. 

The Eight of Swords is Enjolras. Prouvaire pins it up to the wall all alone and upside-down. He can’t write poems about Enjolras, he’s discovered. He gets a headache every single time he tries.

He tapes a poem about the river Seine alongside a poem about Bossuet that has the exact same meter and rhyme scheme. A poem about Feuilly has a red string leading it to a poem about Bahorel, because they have matching first lines, even though the rest of each poem goes off in a wildly different direction. He prints of the lyrics to a Queen song to compare to his most recent villanelle about Combeferre, and then adds it to the wall with a small frown. Next to it he puts the Seven of Swords.

Swords cards, he knows from his books, are supposed to depict trials and tribulations. He doesn’t want to know why they match so well to his friends, or to the futures of his friends. Perhaps that is why the tarot will not speak to him.

A crystal ball must be more certain. For him, danger appears as nothing more than a metaphor, and isn’t that frustrating?

*

They are back in the Musain the next day, nursing hangovers and already planning another attack through the cherry blossoms. The city in the spring is soft and beautiful and Enjolras is determined to break it into pieces. Grantaire, at his side, is determined to drag his feet.

 _He loves you,_ Prouvaire wants to say. _Be kind._

“Enjolras would have us marching every week,” Feuilly is saying. “Every day of every week. If he runs on the French republic calendar that’s him trying to fit ten marches into our seven days!”

Prouvaire laughs, but his train of thought is forcibly derailed a moment later by a loud gasp. Everyone turns around. Enjolras is staring down at his phone with a thunderstruck expression.

“Ça va, Enjolras?” Grantaire asks.

“Ouais, ouais!” Enjolras yelps as he jumps out of his seat. “J’ai une pêche d’enfer!”

He trips two separate times in his scramble to get to the door. The Amis all turn to stare at each other as they hear his feet pounding down the old wooden steps of the Musain.

“Did he just say ‘I have a peach of hell?’” Pontmercy asks weakly.

Prouvaire is the first one to turn when he hears Enjolras thundering back up the steps. The blond bursts into the room with a newspaper held high over his head. “A la une!” he is shouting. “A la une!”

“English, Enjolras!” Someone laughs. Prouvaire is already on his feet.

Grantaire grabs the paper from Enjolras and his eyes go wide with delight. “We’re on the front page!”

The back room explodes with noise. They all crowd around Enjolras and Grantaire too see their own faces on the front page of the paper. It’s a beautiful shot; all of them are singing and covered in flower petals, and their arms are linked together, and the signs held by people around them are all clearly visible.

“We look great,” Bahorel says appreciatively. “Hey Grantaire, isn’t this the bastard that tripped you up?”

“So it is.”

“What does the article say?” Bossuet demands.

Grantaire rips the paper open and begins reading it out dramatically. He doesn’t seem to notice that Enjolras’s chin is hooked over his shoulder so that the blond can follow along. Or perhaps he does notice. His face is red and he doesn’t stop grinning as he reads.

Prouvaire can’t make sense of the words. A poem is fighting its way out of his head once more. He sits down so that he doesn’t fall down and drags his journal towards himself. He has a pen stuck behind his ear; in his haste to get it onto the page he accidentally swipes ink across his cheek.

_orpheus was supposed to have a voice as strong as the branches of an oak tree and lighter than its leaves. his song was sweeter in the air than that of the west wind. he reached all the way to the gods in the sky, and his roots grew all the way down to hell, but he never had it in him to be ancient. even the oldest oak trees must succumb to a storm. he was torn apart limb from limb._

“What’s that?” Feuilly asks. He’s looking over Prouvaire’s shoulder.

Prouvaire closes his notebook. His hands feel very cold. “It’s a poem about Enjolras,” he says, and it isn’t a lie. His head is spinning. The Chariot, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, Death. The Suit of Swords. Enjolras, compared to Orpheus, and Grantaire destined to die.

Prouvaire thinks of the sprawling map of poems and cards and songs on his walls. The red yarn that ties them together is too accurate to their dynamic. This group is too intertwined to ever face fate alone. If one end of string is torn from the wall the entire display will come tumbling down in a shower of verses and futures. 

Enjolras and Grantaire’s fates might as well be a death sentence for them all.

Before he is swept up in celebrations again he carefully tears the poem about Enjolras out of his notebook and rips the paper into tiny pieces. None of his friends notice when he slips down the stairs to throw the scraps away.

It is a terrible fate to know the future and chronicle it when one cannot change it. But Prouvaire is not a kind poet. As he makes his way slowly up the steps, he vows that he will rewrite their futures. He will not stand by, spouting rhymes, while his friends die. He will drop his pencils and he will fight.

**Author's Note:**

> forgive my french, if it contains any errors. i did my best.
> 
>  _Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus_ means, loosely, “love suffers without food and wine.”
> 
> i can be found on tumblr at [kvothes.](http://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x)


End file.
